THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

Besides the flinty chatter of the wheatears and the occasional screaming of an eagle, there is an omnipresent sound that is at once gay and sinister.  This is the lively discord of bells – all of different tones – as a flock of goats goes by.  They come through the dark bloodily red trunks of the cork-oaks at a quick, stealthy trot moving as a fast as a man can walk.  One knows that the shepherd is there too slipping from tree to tree, or out of sight over the lip of a ravine, or behind the rocks; never coming into view.  The sensation is an uncomfortable one remembering that there is nothing of the meekness of the shepherd of Christian parable in this man, that he is a cruel, hungry dreamer with a gun, and that in this austere, archaic world where human life counts for so little, the shepherd is often separated by a hair’s breadth from the bandit.

Lewis/Selected